A Lesson in Latin Dancing By Kenneth LaFave You can polka, you can waltz, you can jitterbug and twist, and you'll never experience the following: Slowly, their gaze locked, a man and a woman cross the dance floor to embrace neither quite tenderly nor lovingly, but with an edge of sublimated aggression. That would be the tango. You can watch ballet, modern and jazz dance performances without ever seeing this: Her arms raised sinuously, heels drumming a rhythm on the wooden stage, a woman drinks in the adoration of her male consorts. That has to be flamenco. This week and next bring two dance companies to the Scottsdale Center for the Arts whose work offers lessons in the uniqueness and vastness of Hispanic dance forms. Ballet Hispanico presents Nightclub, a three-act journey from the tango to salsa to contemporary club dancing. Paco Peņa Flamenco Dance Company follows with a show exploring flamenco in its traditional and contemporary modes. According to Tina Ramirez, artistic director of the New York-based Ballet Hispanico, the first thing to get over when watching Hispanic dances is the idea that they all look the same. "People think wrongly that Latin dancing is one kind of thing. The different dances actually have different characteristics," Ramirez says. "Nightclub shows some of them. My whole premise is Hispanic people in different times and places. The first part takes place in the 1920s, in a brothel in Buenos Aires. The second act takes place in the 1950s in a social club in Spanish Harlem, and the last act happens in the present, after hours in a club in New York." Along the way, her company performs versions of Argentina's tango, Cuba's mambo, the samba from Brazil. Each is distinct. But don't be too self-critical if they look like cousins. "Latin dances are one huge family, and they're all related in some way or another," says Kathy Weiss, associate faculty at Arizona State University's department of dance. Weiss specializes in tango, salsa and swing. What's called salsa, for example, is essentially the mambo, with rock-based music instead of traditional. Origins of the various forms are largely hidden in history, save for one. "The tango began as a dance between men," Weiss points out. "Women were not allowed to dance with men unless accompanied by a male relative, so men learned by dancing together." The steps they improvised morphed from practice into a competition for who got to lead. Even after traveling to Paris, where it became a chic ballroom dance, the newly named tango - which may derive from an African word for "drum" - retained the distinct flavor of male domination. "The tango was born of poverty and despair," Weiss says. "It could become pretty violent. I remember one dancer from Buenos Aires telling me that, in the old days, if you bumped into someone on the dance floor, you could get a knife in your back. "It's a very dramatic dance." Flamenco, a performance genre, is equally dramatic, but doesn't share the tango's male domination. "Mostly, it's the woman who is displayed in flamenco," says Paco Peņa, a guitarist whose love for flamenco leads him to spend as much time accompanying the dancers in his company as he does giving concerts. "Flamenco contains a great deal of a sensuality innate in the human body. It is not so much overt sexuality. Simply and clearly, women are protected. The woman in flamenco is never touched. The craving for contact with her is there, but respect as well. Flamenco is awareness of sensuality." Peņa, born in the Andalusian city of Cordoba, Spain, which is the heart of flamenco culture, sees the influence of his form in the varied dances of the Americas - and vice versa: "So many musical cultures in Latin America stem from different parts of Spain, including Andalusia. They added the native element which made things fresh and spicy. Because of the interchanging of cultures, that came back into flamenco. In flamenco we have a group of songs and dances known as ida y vuelta - 'going and coming back' - which are very strongly influenced by Latin American musical elements introduced in the early 20th century." The Americanized flamenco dances are lighter than their traditional counterparts, Peņa notes. "The mood and feel of flamenco have had a great influence on Latin American social dancing," Weiss says. The prideful way male flamenco dancers carry themselves often shows up on the Latin social dance floor. Ballet Hispanico's Nightclub shows one line of change for Latin American social dance forms. The first act concentrates on one dance, the tango. The second act mixes and matches samba with mambo with cha-cha. And the third integrates Latin American ways of moving into a contemporary pop music context, complete with deejay. "We're so entertaining that people don't often get the subtext," Ramirez says. But there is one: The treatment of women changes in the three sections. The tango is very male dominated, then the salsa dancing is more or less equal, and in the last section, it's female oriented." How should the novice prepare for the world of Latin dance? People should come with their eyes open and willing to see," Ramirez says. Come without any preconceived notions about how men and women should behave." Source: AZ Central

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